The present application relates generally to an improved data processing apparatus and method. In one aspect, the present application relates to generating web searches with enhanced privacy and security protections.
Online services, such as web search and advertising, are becoming increasingly personalized as larger search firms (e.g., Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) consolidate web searches to learn more about an individual. To provide improved search results, tailored advertisements, and/or personalized content for an improved customer experience to the user, these online services use data mining techniques to build user profiles (containing, for example, web sites frequently visited, user interests, demographics information, location and so forth) by tracking multiple online activities from the same user and linking them together using various techniques, albeit usually under poorly informed user consent. As search providers continue to increase mining of search data to expand their understanding of individuals, the scope of the profiles being built will increasingly go beyond the individual to larger associations, enabling the search provider to identify family members or business associates related to an individual searcher, and to then deliver content or advertisements targeted to the larger association of individuals. For example, advertisements for Valentines flowers or chocolates may be directed to an individual searcher if the advertiser acquires user profile information that the individual searcher lives with a partner or spouse.
As the extent and sophistication of data mining techniques increases, there is a growing security and privacy interest from individual users in preventing this level of examination into their web searches. For example, an individual having legitimate privacy concerns may wish to prevent a search company from knowing about the individual's web search or online interactions, (e.g., likes, dislikes, etc.). In addition, an employee having business security concerns may wish to prevent revelation of business information that is contained in a web search (i.e., a technologist's search for “improving semiconductor effectiveness via use of a silicon base substrate” or an investment banker's search for “short term drop in the valuation of company XYZ.”) Thus, there are many reasons that users would like to prevent search companies from having a very accurate knowledge about their searches, particularly as potentially sensitive information can be inferred from search queries, such as income level, health issues, or political beliefs. And while there is often significant personal information about individuals and their related family members posted on social web sites, such as Facebook, such information can be restricted from being shared to other providers of Internet services. In contrast, there are few practical ways for many people to optimize productivity or live without the power of Internet searches.
There have been different solutions proposed for protecting the privacy of web searches, such as connecting to search engines through an anonymous web browsing systems, concealing the user's search queries by using private information retrieval (PIR) systems, concealing the user's search profile, inserting randomly-generated search queries to hide the user's actual search trail (e.g., TrackMeNot), disguising search query words by adding masking keywords (e.g., GooPIR), and other obfuscation-based web search privacy systems. However, such solutions add cost and complexity to the search process, such as requiring the search engine to implement and run the encryption security protocols or requiring widespread adoption of obfuscation-based systems to reduce the economic incentives for performing mass sophisticated profiling. In addition, the increasing sophistication of search profiling tools diminishes the effectiveness of obfuscation-based systems which use randomized search queries with statically mined terms when such search queries can be detected and disregarded by the search provider. As a result, the existing solutions for providing web searches with privacy and security protections are relatively static, do not broadly address the problems noted above, and/or are extremely difficult at a practical level.